"Pushed out of School for Being Me": New York City's Struggle to Include Youth and Community Voices in School Discipline Reform

Foster, Kesi

Voices in Urban Education, n42 p43-49 2015

Every day in New York City, between 90,000 and 100,000 young people, almost all of them Black and Latina/o, must show up to school thirty to forty-five minutes before their first class begins because they attend schools with metal detectors and scanners. School administrators and policymakers have accepted this scenario as part of Black and Latina/o youth's educational experiences. They refuse to acknowledge that this approach to school discipline is an extension of the criminalization of Black and Brown bodies perpetuated by a multitude of systems that young people must interact with every day. In the 2013-2014 school year, the data on suspensions and arrests helped to paint a picture of the depth of disparities between different populations of students in New York City. Black students represented 26 percent of the student population, but accounted for 53 percent of all students who were suspended and 61 percent of all students who were arrested in school. The lived experiences of the students that continue to be pushed out complete that picture. Black, Latina/o, LGBT, non-gender-conforming students, and students with disabilities are having a vastly different experience with school discipline than their cis-gendered White peers. It was against this backdrop that the Positive and Safe Schools Advancing Equity (PASSAGE) initiative in New York City was created. Community organizers, advocates, and the New York City Department of Education (DOE) came together as part of this initiative of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University (AISR) to develop reforms that would transform the public education systems' approach to school discipline. If NYC chooses to end this unhealthy and unproductive approach to school discipline, the lessons learned from PASSAGE will help build a stronger community and district partnership to provide students with an environment conducive to learning where they are treated with dignity and respect.